I’ve discovered something wonderful: writer’s prompts.
Experienced writers will already know about prompts. I’d heard of them myself, but had dismissed them as being too directed, too constrained, like a fill-in-the-blank test from high school. Their purpose was lost on me. I’m a straight-ahead sort of writer. I don’t keep drafts or notes or printed copies to “bruise with a highlighter” as our Amyg once said. That wonderful phrase has stuck with me for reasons I couldn’t name until now.
A few days ago, I bought a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life by Judy Reeves and Janet Fitch, and I finally understand what Amy meant.
Writing should be messy. It should leave bruises upon the paper and an ink-stained dent in my knuckle. There should be snippets and exercise journals and a tiny notebook for my back pocket, and there should be exercises to limber up my creaky joints.
That’s where the prompts come in.
A Writer’s Book of Days provides a few rules:
Date your page, find the topic for today’s session, and write it at the top of your page. Then, before you start to think about how you want to approach the topic, simply grab the tail of the first image that sailed into your mind when you wrote it down, and begin writing. Let the words spill from your pen easily and naturally. Don’t worry about staying in the lines; don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, or grammar. Don’t worry about anything. Just write. When you come to a natural slowdown, ease your grip on your pen (you may be surprised at how tightly you’re holding on). Breathe. Let the next image come to you. It may be an extension of the first image, or it may be something new that was born out of what you’ve been writing. Whatever image appears, don’t resist. Just fall into it, and keep writing.
Above all else, don’t stop to think and don’t go back and reread what you’ve written. If you can’t think of the name of a place or a person or some other fact, make up something or draw a line. If you run into a blank wall, rewrite the topic, repeat the last line you write, or write, “I don’t know what to write next.” If you keep the pen moving, you’ll find your place again. Just keep writing until the time is up or until you feel complete. If you can, read your piece aloud after you’ve finished.
Why didn’t I ever think about writing exercise this way?
Prompt:
Write about a black-winged moth
Photograph by Keith Carter
I discarded the blackness of the wings, because the image of a moth recalled the memory of a homeless man I’d seen on my way to work. The man was wearing his blanket like a shawl, the way Everett will do in the early morning hours when he first wanders from his bedroom.
This is from my notebook:
A man moves across the parking lot, a pale moth in the pink light, dusty wings of blanket fluttering at his feet. Where has he slept, wrapped in his shabby wings, with the scent of the desert in his nose. What sagebrush has he crushed under his head – a prickled pillow, fixed in place.
He is a child wandering through the living room in search of a cup of milk. His pocket is full of treasure. A coin; a speckled molar, cracked in two; four shoelaces (always handy); a plastic alien on a key chain; a picture of Katie. His cup won’t be filled with cream, but with clattering coins and dollars soft and damp as old leaves.
His chin itches. His fingertips are frayed, fringed with skin-splinters; a boulder of sand grinds under his eyelid. Pulp blooms in the gap where his molar used to be.
Mothman has not dreamed, as I have dreamed. He lives in the nebulous half-sleep of one with time on his hands. He drifts. Remembers a balloon he had as a child, wobbling against a blue sheet of sky.
This is my ribbon of words, this balloon-tailed thought . . .
Beep, all done.
Okay, it’s a disconnected jumble of imagery and assorted nonsense (and startling alliteration which I would normally avoid), but the exercise has opened my mind and encouraged me to get a little messy. I feel I’ve discovered some sort of addictive game, years after everyone else has mastered it. Still, for me it’s new and I’m smitten:
At the end of an empty street
Attending a ceremony
This is how lonesome feels
Now it’s your turn. If you’d like to play along, pick a prompt, set your timer and go. Fifteen minutes. Anyone can write for fifteen minutes.
